


the stars lean in a little closer (all to welcome you)

by aprincessofdaxam



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Adoption, TW - Infertility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 13:38:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19377820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aprincessofdaxam/pseuds/aprincessofdaxam
Summary: "There are so many ways to build a family," he says. And in her heart, she knows this to be true.





	the stars lean in a little closer (all to welcome you)

**Author's Note:**

> *Canon through Season 2 and then I take liberties (Mon-El goes to the future. He doesn't come back married. You'll figure it out).  
> *I purposefully fudged one major detail in this. Halley's Comet isn't due to come past Earth til like the 2060s. I made it happen sooner. It's fine.  
> *The blocks of this story in italics are flashback scenes. They are not in chronological order, while the main body of the story is.  
> *I put a trigger warning on this for infertility. It's more 'alien genetic incompatibility' than anything, but it may hit some of the same nerves, so please tread with caution if the topic will upset you.  
> *Title from Sleeping At Last, because of course it is.

"Are you sure you don't want to come? Between Mon-El and I, we could totally fly you all out."  
  
"Thanks, but positive," Alex smiles, handing her the last glass from their dinner clean-up to dry and put in the cupboard. "We're just going to catch it from here. Come by tomorrow and get some cookies. There should be extras because I'm going to attempt to put a sugar cap on the girls, or they'll NEVER go to sleep afterward."  
  
As if on cue, Ruby and Julia run through the room in a blaze of red hair. When Alex and Sam had adopted the little auburn-haired girl, Ruby, thrilled to be getting a sister, had asked to put red streaks in her own dark hair in solidarity and welcome, and has also tagged her younger sibling with the family-appropriate nickname Jewel.  
  
Kara's heart lifts watching her nieces, and watching Alex's involuntary smile - the one that makes her eyes light in a special way. She knows that Alex, in her own story, and Alex and Sam together fought to hell and back to get this - literally.  
  
Her heart lifts again when she hears her husband touch down in the backyard, her enhanced hearing picking up the sound of his feet a moment before he sneaks up on their nieces at the back door and makes them scream.  
  
Supergirl's victories are loud and out there for the world - occasionally, in headlines written by Kara Matthews. But Kara Zor-El's victories are quieter, much more personal. It's a victory that right now, at this moment, she wants nothing more than exactly what she has - their own normal in their unique extended family.  
  
******************************************************************************  
  
_"I feel like we've been to the moon and back these last couple of years. Only farther. Because we know the moon isn't actually that far, all things considered."_  
  
_She snorts, because the statement is so true. He laughs, too, because it's so ridiculous, swinging their twined hands between them as they walk through the park, which is ablaze with fall color._  
  
_"We've been way farther," she says softly. "But we're still here. We still have each other. We still have a lot."_  
  
_"We're still two good people who love each other. So there's this one thing - " He swallows hard, and she squeezes his hand. "This one thing we can't do. But we have a lot. So if it's just us - let's enjoy that."_  
  
_Their own unique normal, she thinks. Their own brand of domesticity, with capes hung together in the closet, their own peoples' holidays marked on the calendar in the kitchen, taking their nieces flying._  
  
_So their circumstances come with some - circumstances. So it's going to be just them. Just them is quite a lot. And she suddenly feels free, for the first time in a long time._  
  
******************************************************************************  
  
She feels free, sitting with her legs dangling over the edge. It's a perfect early-spring night on the cliffs of Greenland looking out toward the dark north Atlantic Ocean, in a spot he found long ago - or not yet, if you want to consider the future timeline - and promised to take her someday. There's a brisk breeze blowing off the water that might chill them - if they were human.  They're sitting in companionable silence, watching the comet streak across the dark sky, a blazing orb of light followed by a trail of glitter painting the sky in its wake.  
  
"It's beautiful," she murmurs.  
  
"Yeah," he says with a smile in his voice that lets her know he's not looking at the comet.  
  
But before she can turn her head to tease him - or possibly more, since they're utterly alone up here - a spark of green in the tail of the comet catches her eye. She focuses on it, frowning, and then gasps when it peels away from the rest of the tail and begins plummeting to Earth, accelerating as it does so.  
  
Is it a fragment of the comet falling to Earth? She doesn't know, but hoping to save whatever is in its path, she is on her feet and leaping into the sky barely a breath later, Mon-El following her into the sky.  
  
She nearly pulls up short when she sees that it's a pod - more bronze in color than theirs, more circular in shape, but clearly a single-passenger pod. Her brief pause gives Mon-El time to snag the tail of the craft that is now spinning through the atmosphere, being dragged downward a few yards by its momentum until Kara joins him and their combined strength is enough to stop the craft.  
  
She cautiously circles around to peer in the front visor, and freezes, her mouth dropping open in shock. She looks and Mon-El, who looks similarly stunned, and then looks back.  
  
Because inside the pod is the tiniest baby girl, her eyes closed below a shock of dark hair, sleeping peacefully and unaware of the two aliens staring down at her in shock.  
  
******************************************************************************  
  
_She sits at the window and looks up at the stars that night after listening to her sister sob in her arms._  
  
_"Maggie doesn't want to have kids ... she's not gonna change her mind. The only way that we're gonna work through it is if I let it go. And I've tried, Kara. I - I love her so much that it hurts, and I convinced myself that living a life with her, it was enough. But watching Ruby ... I want all the experiences that Mom had with us. You know? I want to take my kid camping, and I wanna show her the constellations. I want to teach her how to read, how to throw a punch, and how to make cheesy valentines. And I want to hold her when she has a bad dream, and I wanna tell her that the world's a better place because she's in it. I want all of it."_  
  
_She herself has never imagined that. Not the way Alex has. Mostly because she knew it wasn't a serious possibility for her. Not only does she have no idea how to navigate an open relationship with a human emotionally or physically - the perils of a secret identity and superstrength - but there's the issue of genetic compatibility. She'd accepted it, the way she'd accepted hiding her powers, missing her parents. She doesn't think about the things she can't have. Her mother's voice. Contact lenses. Airplane travel - she doesn't want to think about what TSA would make of her._  
  
_But for a few months, it had crossed her mind, mostly because she'd wondered what it would be like to watch Mon-El, who fell out of space and into her life, bringing their shared histories and all the possibility that implied, with him. Mon-El, with his playful attitude and his huge heart, with an equally-playful child who looked a little like him and a little like her._  
  
_Mon-El, who is out there floating in her pod through space somewhere._  
  
_The stars give, and the stars take away._  
  
******************************************************************************  
  
Winn was practically vibrating with excitement over having a new piece of alien technology to examine. The pod is now in his lab, where he's attempting to trace the ion signatures attached to it - so similar to what the DEO had done with other pods, long ago - and to see if there is any information on the origins and the journey of this little girl. Because she's certainly not human. She is humanoid enough - until you see the six tiny toes on each tiny foot, and the iridescent green sheen across the soft skin on her collar bones, matching a streak of green in her dark hair.  
  
"I don't recognize her species," J'onn says.  
  
"She's breathing easily in our atmosphere," Alex says, moving what amounts to a high-tech stethoscope over her and taking a listen, utterly focused on her job despite having been dragged out in the middle of the night, leaving Sam to deal with two sugar-high young girls.  
  
The little girl scrunches up her face, and despite the warning, everyone in the  medbay jumps when she lets out a squawk. Alex makes soothing sounds, shushing her gently, but despite the comfort, the baby begins to cry in earnest then, her tiny face scrunched up in upset.  
  
It surprises Alex when Mon-El is the one to reach out and take her. She looks at him in askance, but his eyes are locked on the little girl as he mumbles something she can't translate. She looks at Kara, but her eyes are also on the little girl even though her arms are crossed protectively across her body.  
  
Mon-El feels something strange in his heart - and his heart stops entirely when the little girl in his arms opens her eyes for the first time on this planet. Because her bright blue eyes so clearly match Kara's.  
  
******************************************************************************  
  
_His last thought had been of those eyes, as he squeezes his own shut as the pod jerks and shakes its way through the wormhole and plummets to an Earth he doesn't recognize anymore. He misses those eyes for nearly three years in the 31st century, as he fights to find his way back to her while also finding lifelong friends and comrades and they try to salvage peace from interplanetary chaos (he and his best friend Imra are both equally bored by the number of peace summits they sit through on Titan, and equally amused by the suggestion of a diplomatic marriage, although Imra's sister laughs harder than anyone)._  
  
_LCorp has developed a cure for his lead allergy centures later, but it still feels like he can't breathe sometimes, and he's exhausted. He understands now why she said the cape was heavy. But he promised her, and he wears her mother's necklace. So he keeps fighting - and no matter how tired he is when he goes to sleep, or how tired he still is when he wakes, he takes a moment and thinks of her eyes. Because he's afraid if he doesn't, he'll start forgetting._  
  
_He thinks of her as his mind is dragged down into hypersleep, after a mission gone awry knocks them through a wormhole, and Brainy thinks they have crash-landed centuries before life is even present on Earth. His best solution is for them to all preserve themselves in stasis while his techno-organic brain, which is half sleepless computer, can figure out a way back to something resembling their time._  
  
_He thinks he's hallucinating her when he wakes up and the first thing he sees is her eyes, but then she throws her arms around him, even though he's still damp from the pod and too dazed to hold her back, and he sees Imra and Garth and J'onn and Winn and Brainy standing behind her and he knows it's not a dream._  
  
******************************************************************************  
  
There's a cloudiness in her head that she doesn't quite understand, so she joins Winn in the lab to watch him pry things out of the pod's console instead of staying in the medbay while someone is sent to fetch baby formula - because they can't really think of another option at the moment, and because Eliza, consulted via Skype, agrees that can't hurt.  
  
Thinking about how lucky she is to have her friends and family sometimes grounds her, so she tries to focus on Winn working, apparently extracting a crystal from the console. Still, she isn't really paying attention, so she jumps a little when Winn discards his safety goggles and tells her to fetch J'onn and the others and to meet him in a room she is familiar with.  
  
"This was giving me deja vu," Winn says once the team is assembled in the small room that houses the technology to project Alura Zor-El's construct. "The technology is similar. I think there might be a message on it, or something to tell us where she came from."  
  
And indeed, when Kara and Alex fire up the system, they are joined in the room by the translucent image of a raven-haired woman with a green streak in her hair and sad green eyes, speaking to them in a soft voice.  
  
"I am Aklinli Mer'di, and my people reside on a planet called Aquana in a system that we know as Deep Kor space. I am speaking to you via a universal translator embedded in this crystal. The child you have found on this ship comes in peace.  
  
"We are an aquatic and farming community who have always lived an insular and pacifist existence. We do not venture off our world because some generations ago, an aggressive species from another system moved in in search of resources. They believe worlds they encounter are theirs. We were able to hold them at bay, but they have remained in orbit above our world. We are all victims of our natures. They refuse to let go because of their warfaring nature; we refuse to drive them away because of our pacifist nature.  
  
"We recently became aware because of our seers, who combine our technology with their understanding of the skies and the planet, that a comet is due to pass through our system. It is likely to pass close enough to our moon to shift it and impact our planet's gravitational field. The resulting floods, the climate change, will be ... catastrophic. We are unable to depart the planet in large numbers, lacking the spacecraft to do so or the means to fight our way through our captors - who may perish as well. Our only solace is that perhaps a child or two may survive.  
  
"In the dark of the night, I sent my daughter into our skies, in this magnetically-altered craft which will follow the tail of the comet. It is programmed to disengage from this trailing orbit when it passes near enough to a planet similar to ours - a planet more than half covered with water, orbiting a yellow sun. That is when she will wake - and we hope that, there, she will find a family and care and that through her, a piece of our world may live on.  
  
To my daughter ... Be brave. Be strong. You were born in love, and may you carry the compassion and peace of our world that you may never know."  
  
The message raises as many questions as it answers. But as they all exchange solemn glances around the room - both the humans, and the three aliens who fled shattered worlds - they all know one truth - that this is their responsibility now.  
  
******************************************************************************  
  
_When Alex can't find her, she knows where to look. It's a brilliant summer day, National City shimmering in sunlight outside on the summer solstice. Once, a similar solstice holiday was a major celebration on Krypton. It's going to be one of those days._  
  
_"Kara?" she asks softly, pushing open the door to the room where Alura's construct resides._  
  
_When Kara looks up at her from her position kneeling on the floor, her eyes are filled with tears. Alex just sits on the floor beside her, the concrete cold under her legs. She just sits and is there, as Kara's soft questions punctuate the silence._  
  
_"How could you send Astra away?"_  
  
_"I'm sorry. I am not programmed to answer that question."_  
  
_"How could you send me away?"_  
  
_"I'm sorry. I am not programmed to answer that question."_  
  
_"How could you leave me alone?"_  
  
_"I'm sorry. I am not programmed to answer that question."_  
  
******************************************************************************  
  
He's quiet when he joins her out on the balcony of the DEO. She doesn't look at him, but she catches his hand when he comes to lean on the barrier beside her. They both know what it feels like to lose worlds. All the things they are both feeling - _this is like a raw wound, I still miss it sometimes, this poor girl has a long road and such weight on her shoulders_ \- go unsaid between them.  
  
"Winn thinks the pod might have some more chips and crystals with history of her people and stuff," he finally tells her.  
  
"That's good!" Kara exclaims, genuinely pleased. "She'll want that someday," she adds, more reflectively.  
  
He nods. "J'onn says we'll have to take care of her, here at the DEO, until we learn more, and figure out what to do."  
  
"We won't let her down."  
  
******************************************************************************  
  
_"I just feel like I let you down."_  
  
_She fidgets with the end of the faded red blanket that is draped over them on opposite ends of the couch, unable to meet his eyes._  
  
_"It's not your fault. And it's not mine. And it's not Eliza's. The wiring didn't work."_  
  
_"It's plumbing," she corrects automatically. "And please don't refer to it as either ever again."_  
  
_His soft smile from the other end of the sofa as she peeks up lets her know that he made the gaffe on purpose, to make her smile, and she thinks she loves him all the more for it. He pulls her into his arms against his heartbeat, like he did all those years ago when she was in tears over Jeremiah._  
  
_"You have never let me down," he says softly. "You could never let me down."_  
  
******************************************************************************  
  
He can't seem to put her down when they're in the medbay with Alex. When she is declared healthy and not dangerous (Sam Arias-Danvers' origin story has taught them that even babies can have nefarious origins), she starts riding along with him when he visits Winn in the lab. They start thinking of her as their sidekick. After two weeks go by, even gruff J'onn cracks a smile in response to her giggle - before he quickly goes stern again, warning the two younger men to watch what she is trying to put in her mouth.  
  
Kara can't seem to find it in her to pick her up, not trusting herself. Those bright blue eyes follow hers, and she has the strangest sensation that she's looking into her own eyes. These two weeks go by, and she and Mon-El don't talk about it. But beside him in the field, she has the strangest sensation that he is fighting harder than ever - that he is fighting for something. And she has the strangest sensation when she heads back to the DEO and the girl is still there.  
  
It's rare these days, for an attack at the DEO. Rare - but not impossible. It's a random Thursday when flames come racing across the floor of command central, scattering agents. A rogue metahuman with flamethrowers for hands, who Nia thwarted after dreaming of his robbery attempt on a high-end apartment complex. He's tracked Dreamer and her colleagues Supergirl and Valor back here to their base of operations and now there is chaos. Between Alex's flame-retardant cannons and Supergirl's ice breath, they are fighting the tide back until he knocks an agent off, darts to the left -  
  
And all of a sudden, the fire is racing toward the medbay.  
  
And all of a sudden, she has that little girl in her arms, turning her back to the blast of flame, feeling the heat as the fire licks along her cape but isn't capable of penetrating or moving any farther.  
  
An hour later, when the threat is subdued, the flamethrower contained in a cell, Winn overseeing the clean-up of the technology in command central while J'onn sees to and debriefs the other agents (because Winn is afraid of Pam from HR), and Alex finally has a chance to look over the infant.  
  
Alex has been watching for the last two weeks. Alex watches, how the little girl's hand stays attached to Kara's, and how her sister doesn't pull away. Alex watches, and waits.  
  
******************************************************************************  
  
_Sixteen years ago, when she and Jeremiah were raising Alex, who was just entering her teen years, just three humans living in this seaside house in Midvale, this is not something Eliza Danvers ever thought she'd see._  
  
_But now? This house has maybe never seen so much joy._  
  
_Eliza watches her adopted Kryptonian daughter, still flushed with happiness in her white dress, dancing with her Daxamite husband, while meanwhile, Alex is exchanging shy glances with the former-Worldkiller-Kryptonian who is re-braiding her daughter's dark hair after too much dancing as the latter chatters excitedly with "Aunt Lena." The guest list is small, limited to those who know the bride and groom's secret identities, but there are Nialtorians and humans and Coluans and Saturnians in her backyard, and she's sitting in contended silence next to a Martian who was once just a man she considered an enemy but who she now knows is family._  
  
_"There are so many ways to build a family," he says, as if he's reading her mind. And across the lawn, with ears that hear everything, Kara smiles softly, because in her heart, she knows this to be true._  
  
*******************************************************************************  
  
It's going to be a serious conversation. So when Alex knocks on the door of the loft, knowing Mon-El is working late, she is armed with potstickers AND pizza AND red wine. She lets her distracted Kryptonian sister chatter about the week at CatCo and get some dinner in her before she takes charge of the conversation, gently but firmly.  
  
"I was just thinking the other day about how our family's gifts have come in pods from space," she says conversationally, watching Kara's hand still on the stem of her wineglass. She continues. "It brought you to our family. I mean, once upon a time, it brought Sam, which is a miracle, you know, besides the death-cult part. It brought Mon-El. And now, I think it brought this little girl."  
  
Kara's head shoots up.  
  
"She can stay at the DEO for now," Alex explains. "But we're really not equipped to be a long-term nursery, to say nothing of the things she'll need as she gets older. She's going to have to go home with someone. We have other alien contacts, but ... "  
  
"I - " Kara swallows. Hard. "What makes you think - "  
  
"I know we don't talk about it," Alex says softly. "But I know. I know you tried, and I know it didn't, or couldn't, happen. And I know it's been hard, and that you haven't said a word to me, because you knew how badly I wanted it, too, and you never wanted to make me feel guilty. And I know you still want it, even if you won't say it, and that Mon-El does, too, and that you can't exactly just walk into a human adoption agency."

"I've spent the last year trying not to want it," Kara admits in a whisper, finally making complete sentences again. "I'm happy again. I'm finally happy. And now ... I'm scared."  
  
"What are you afraid of?"  
  
The answer is a flood of tears as Kara just lays her head down on her arms and cries and cries - a healing waterfall, as Alex just strokes her back.  
  
******************************************************************************  
  
_"I don't like being vulnerable," she had said to him once, fidgeting with her hands while he waited patiently, his eyes soft._  
  
_The stars give, and the stars take away._  
  
******************************************************************************  
  
She follows the sound of the two heartbeats back through the hallways of the DEO to the medbay, where she finds Mon-El making silly faces at a sleepy little girl.  
  
_You look so right together._  
  
She doesn't realize she's spoken aloud until he smiles and makes room for her on the cot. After she is seated and he has settled the little girl in her arms, he wraps an arm around both of them and just watches them.  
  
"You feel it too, don't you," he finally says - not a question, but a statement.  
  
"I feel ... everything. And it feels ... right," she admits. "I'm terrified and in love already and I want to protect her always and ... " There are no words to express the feelings that seem to be overflowing in her chest and bubbling up in her throat to choke out language, so she presses a hand over her heart instead.  
  
Mon-El, her Mon-El, nods, and doesn't look away from her eyes as he presses a hand over his own heart. "I know, and it feels right."  
  
She suddenly wants to laugh and suddenly finds that she's doing it through tears. She's never felt like this before. She thinks it might be called motherhood.  
  
******************************************************************************  
  
_"There are so many ways to build a family," he says. And in her heart, she knows this to be true._  
  
******************************************************************************  
  
"She's tiny."  
  
"So tiny."  
  
"And beautiful."  
  
"So beautiful."  
  
"She needs a name."  
  
"I think I'll be calling her 'beautiful baby girl' for the rest of her life," he admits. "But you're right, she does."  
  
"I have a thought," she admits, almost shyly, unable to look away from the little girl now sleeping in the middle of their bed.  
  
He brushes a hand across her cheek. "Tell me."  
  
She lifts those comet eyes - the eyes that somehow match their daughter's - to his.  
  
"Halley,' she whispers.  
  
_Halley Matthews. Halley Mer'di._  
  
"It's perfect."  
  
"She's perfect."  
  
Like them, she fled a doomed world. Kara knows that every day, she'll think about her mother's wrenching decision - and how she's maybe starting to understand it now. Just like Mon-El is starting to understand that the heavy cape gets lighter when you know exactly what future you're fighting for. And how the burdens and the wrenching memories get lighter when there are others to share your load. Like them, she'll learn how to honor her roots while finding joy on this world. She'll learn the best of both those worlds. She'll learn the best of Krypton and Daxam, too.  
  
But for now, the boy from Daxam and the girl from Krpyton watch their daughter while she sleeps and dreams about comets and lost worlds and the girl she will be, in the end.


End file.
